Congrats, TazOC, on the best Puppy yet IMHO!
Just a coupla minor glitches to report so far:
Running Shanghai Solitaire majongg game comes close to smoking my CPU. The culprit seems to be something called wish8.5 (usr/bin/wish8.5) which fires up two instances and kicks Xorg into overdrive: the CPU is maxed out at 100%!
The only other problem, again minor, is that audio streams (e.g. [url]<a href="http://www.radioparadise.com"> RadioParadise</a>[/url]) stutter in Xmms when scrolling in web pages, also with Gxine, but not when played in RealPlayer10 - go figure!
That's it! This is one very polished beta, at this rate v1 will approach perfection! Certainly its head & shoulders above a certain other WAboy who foists his beta-testing on an unsuspecting public and overcharges them for their pains.
All Puppy is cake - but you've really put the icing on that cake!
To do list:
try out K3B (intigrate .sfs's in remaster?)
install & configure CUPS printing
download & install nVidia drivers & try out 3D
sys specs:
Lighthouse Puppy v2.15Sea_Mbeta4 + v2K3B & Mariner .sfs; Intel PIII 450mhz (o.c. to 600mhz); 512 Mb SDRAM; VIA ApolloPro130x mobo; C-Media CM8738 sndcd; Macronix MX987x5 LANcd; nVidia NV17 [GeForce4 MX 440] vidcd; 52x LG CD-R; 44x Yamaha CD-RW; 2x40G Samsung RAID HDs; 2.36G swap.
(Anyone know if there's a Puppy HW database where the above info can be posted for all to see? Feel free to copy & paste if such exists.)
I reckon the highest praise one can offer any developer is this: "It just works!" This is the best combination of beauty & utility I've ever seen.
btw - Since there's no PayPal link on your Lighthouse site (hint, hint!) I've taken the liberty of sending Barry K. a USD 25 contribution and I invite all Puppy lovers to match or better it... throw that dog a bone!

macadavy,
Thank you for your feedback and praise! Barry and many Puppy developers deserve most of the credit. I'm sure he will make good use of your contribution to further Puppy. I've been looking at some great improvements Barry and the team are working on in Puppy 2.20 pre-alpha in development.

I have not tried Shanghai Solitaire but have seen strange effects with wish/TCL based apps in Lighthouse, though not quite sure why the CPU usage would spike as it did for you. What I observed was hundreds of whiteout files appearing with Puppy mixer, so I use zmixer instead.
(Edit 8 Sept 07) Same problem with Shanghai on my machine; 100% CPU. As muggins suggested I've replaced it with xmahjongg including a .desktop file so that it will be in the menus for beta 5.

Jactek, thanks also for your comments. I haven't had a chance to play with Wine in Lighthouse. I can't wait for myself to get busy and finish up with beta 5 as well. Probably sounds kinda strange me saying that. I'm struggling a bit with potential upgrade vs. clean install issues but the changes are fairly minor so hopefully it won't matter.

John Biles, thank you very much! Just this week I was looking at TEENpup at my buddies place. He was running Lighthouse and decided try something else and so I went over and checked it out as well. I think it's so cool how Puppy encourages custom builds and everyone contributing what they know best. Keep up the good work!
Take care everyone,
-TazOC_________________lhpup.orgLighthouse 64 6.02

First off, lighthouse seems to be really great! From the little that I have played with it there are alot of little things that make it quick, and very usable. I would like to install it to my usbhd if I can get past an issue.

I have not been able to spend a lot of time tinkering with it because Xorg is not working for me and Xvesa comes up in what looks like 640x480 and doesn't show the whole desktop. On Xorg I have tried manually most of the settings and tweaks in the xorgwizard and also manually edited /etc/X11/xorg.conf to my monitor refresh rates with no luck. My wife and children use TeenPup on the same computer with no problem, in fact that is what I am using now.

Can you give me some help with this, are there log files you would like me to quote? It is booting from CD, BTW.

Tazoc,
Thanks for the tip, I should have seen that in all the docs and tips you give. Anyway, that worked, it also allowed Xorg to come up, hope that info helps. Before I asked help on the forum here I tried commenting out the randr & xtrap lines in /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which didn't work.

Thanks again for the tip, lovin the puppy and all the eyecandy. I installed lighthouse to my usbhd along with Mariner and am using it now. Awesome! Beta5 sounds good so far and I hope you will base further lighthouse pups on 'talking stick' or 'happy'. Sounds like alot of great stuff Barry is doing.

Yes, thank you for the update Mike. I'm glad your Xorg and Xvesa is working now. Nice to hear about your good results with usbhd, too. I may order some sd memory this week to play around with my usb adapters and Lighthouse. So far the only one I have is for my old mp3 player and it's full!
-TazOC_________________lhpup.orgLighthouse 64 6.02

Just to follow up on my earlier post, I meant to say that the audio "jitter" with streaming only occurs with Xmms in Firefox (updated to v2.0.0.6), but not in Seamonkey or Opera browsers, and not with RealPlayer, HTH. Btw - I had no prob with the Firefox update.
TazOC - a quick question. Do you know the provenance of the Seamonkey 'Oh Canada' theme? I've searched for it in Mozilla's theme download section but haven't seen it, do you know where I can get it? TIA
Jactek - you might find this post on getting Wine up & running in Puppy helpful: http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=20548
I plan to eventually install Wine myself and will let everyone know how that goes..._________________Welcome to my weird, wild, wonderful, wired world!

If you go to this site: http://users.skynet.be/fa258499/themes.html You'll find the place where "Oh Canada!" theme can now be found for SeaMonkey I believe. In fact, clicking on "home" in the lefthand navigation bar will take you to the homepage also of the site where you'll find oodles of things for SeaMonkey in general. (News, themes, extensions, HowTos, etc.) Everything has been compiled by we members of the SeaMonkey Community and placed there under the good graces of Benoit, who hosts the site. (And who is likewise a great supporter of---Puppy Linux!)

Just to follow up on my earlier post, I meant to say that the audio "jitter" with streaming only occurs with Xmms in Firefox (updated to v2.0.0.6), but not in Seamonkey or Opera browsers, and not with RealPlayer, HTH.

Interesting, I have the same jitter when scrolling in FF with radioparadise.com streaming in XMMS. Not sure why but I can live with it. Hey, if it weren't for that you wouldn't have turned me on to them! I like the music, good background for working on LIghthouse

I might set radioparadise.com default XMMS startup for LIghthouse and include it in Streamtuner Bookmarks. This might be a little confusing to infrequent/non-Lighthouse users. I'd set up XMMS to autostart and autoplay with X in beta 4. For beta 5 I moved the 'xmms-p' shortcut from /root/autostart to /root/autostart/DisabledItems. So this only applies the first time XMMS is manually started while online. Double clicking a stream in Streamtuner and closing XMMS will 'save' that as the new default stream, opened next time XMMS is started.

Any other suggestions for default streams? Beta 4's default stream KLAN East Valley has disappeared unfortunately so I need something more reliable, but still must be in a similar vein of alternative/rock/progressive and more or less commercial talk free. I also like jazz, new age, blues and social satire/comedy. Enjoy Porcupine Tree and Wilco lately.
-TazOC_________________lhpup.orgLighthouse 64 6.02

Eyes-Only: Pour un lien à ce bel site, merci ! Oliwni!
Really nice to know some SeaMonkey supporters are also Puppy supporters, and vice-versa - that's how we build community.
TazOC: Delighted you like RadioParadise! If you want to make it a default for Xmms in Lighthouse Puppy you'll be glad to know its already in Streamtuner under the SHOUTcast listings: Top Streams > Other/Mixed > Eclectic. Btw - they've had Wilco's wonderful song 'California Stars' from the Mermaid Avenue album of Woody Guthrie materiel they made with Billy Bragg in regular rotation lately. _________________Welcome to my weird, wild, wonderful, wired world!

I tried your version of Puppy. I was unable to use it so I'll give you my experience in case the input may be helpful.

When I booted from the CD I had to choose Vesa because it's the only one that works for my system until I install nvidia drivers. It didn't give me the option to choose resolution so it was at 640 X something. Everything was so big I could barely see anything. I managed to open the X Server chooser wizard to change the resolution but the resolution wouldn't change.

The menus in Linux, and in most any system with plenty of apps installed, can be daunting.

No kiddin'! I've had a devil of a time trying to get Xshisen on my start & desktop menus. Note that when I installed an official pup pkg. 'Bubbles' it showed up on the menu, no prob, so it doesn't seem 'fixmenus' is at fault. But even though the PupSoftwareInstaller made all the right noises (menu updated, etc.) no entry appeared in the Start > Applications > Fun menu. I RTFM'd & ransacked the Forums and found lots of suggestions, none of which worked. I created a xshisen.desktop in /usr/share/applications but that didn't work. I attempted to explore the XDG menus (what a many-layered onion that is, I got lost!) but none (puppy-fun, etc.) had anything in them that remotely resembled what appeared on the menu! I looked for an icewn.rc that doesn't seem to exist and finally stumbled upon jwm.rc which was exactly what I was looking for but it cautioned that it was not to be edited, all editing should be done in the jwm.rc template. The template was just that and I couldn't see how any editing there would help. I finally gave up and dragged & dropped for a desktop link (which is trivial) - I just hope I don't have to do that with every dot.pup I install or I'll run out of desktop space PDQ!
Am I missing something simple in all this, or is xshisen just an older dot.pup that seeks to put itself in the no-longer-existing DotPup menu?
Any suggestions as to how to manually edit menus in LHPuppy? Update: So I go to Start > Documents > Text Editors to open Leafpad and low & behold what do I see but Xshisen nestled in between SeaMonkey Composer and the Text Editors sub-menu, and again between the MP and e3 console editors within the sub-menu - go figure! So how does one manually edit menus in LHPuppy? _________________Welcome to my weird, wild, wonderful, wired world!

I tried your version of Puppy. I was unable to use it so I'll give you my experience in case the input may be helpful.

When I booted from the CD I had to choose Vesa because it's the only one that works for my system until I install nvidia drivers. It didn't give me the option to choose resolution so it was at 640 X something. Everything was so big I could barely see anything. I managed to open the X Server chooser wizard to change the resolution but the resolution wouldn't change.

Hi moncha, sorry for the delay in responding. LIghthouse Beta 4 has a major issue with Xvesa. You can try this workaround described here: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=139987#139987
Or just wait a day or two; I'm debugging a new Lighthouse 215 ISO Beta 5 right now, which includes improved support for Xvesa and many other updates and enhancements. I hope to have it ready for upload tomorrow.
-TazOC_________________lhpup.orgLighthouse 64 6.02

Am I missing something simple in all this, or is xshisen just an older dot.pup that seeks to put itself in the no-longer-existing DotPup menu?
Any suggestions as to how to manually edit menus in LHPuppy? Update: So I go to Start > Documents > Text Editors to open Leafpad and low & behold what do I see but Xshisen nestled in between SeaMonkey Composer and the Text Editors sub-menu, and again between the MP and e3 console editors within the sub-menu - go figure! So how does one manually edit menus in LHPuppy?

Hi macadavy, good question! Complicated answer but I'll try to keep it simple, yet answer so that maybe others can be helped also... Many DotPups were were written before XDG menu system was adopted in Puppy, so xshisen.pup, for example doesn't by default come with a .desktop application file necessary for proper XDG menu support.

What is a .desktop file? A small text file for each app, usually found in /usr/share/applications. Open that folder in Rox-Filer, right-click on one|Open As Text to see what is inside. To make a new one in Lighthouse, right-click in an empty area inside /usr/share/applications | click New | Application | Create. Now you'll have a new file there--Application.desktop, so rename it the same as your new application, e.g., xshisen.desktop. (I see you're on the right track as you indicate you made a .desktop file and it's now showing in the menu.) Anyway, right-click | Open As Text. Now, go through the entries, changing the ones that need to be changed for xshisen instead of what's there (abiword.)

Exec=
This line specifies how to execute the application. If the app is in the menu but doesn't work right when you click on it, open a Terminal and copy and paste everything after the Exec= to see what's happening.

Icon=
In Lighthouse (and in KDE) many icons are .png (not .xpm) and located within /usr/share/icons. So the DefaultBrowser.desktop has the entry: Icon=browse-gold2.png

I put in #comments below in the template to help explain each line; most are from a helpful post by Rarsa: www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=7685 Rules of thumb on Desktop entries:
1-This file is Case sensitive
2-If you aren't sure about a key (existing line), leave it alone.

Now getting back to your question, look at:
Categories=
This one is what determines where the app will appear in the menus and whether it can be in more than one place. More than one category separated by a semicolon ( ; ) will allow more than one entry in the menu system. Too many? Just pick the one you want and remove the others.
For more info on categories see http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/apa.html
and for Barry's specific Puppy menu categories, open
/etc/xdg/menus/hierarchy with a text editor.

When you've finished with the new .desktop file, save your changes and click Menu | Window Manager | Refresh Menus or type fixmenus in a Terminal.
-TazOC_________________lhpup.orgLighthouse 64 6.02Last edited by tazoc on Mon 17 Sep 2007, 23:30; edited 4 times in total

Thanks TazOC - easy when you know how! The missing key ingredient was 'Categories'. I modified the .desktop and ran 'fixmenus' and every thing is as it should be. Its interesting that the problem was not any fault in LHPuppy, it stemmed from my ignorance of the XDG menu system. LH remains a really skookum Puppy variant and its only beta!
I'll take this opportunity to mention success with CUPS printing: the installation was trivial, configuring my EPSON StylusC66 likewise, and my puppy now prints!
Tried using the 3DCC to download/install nVidia drivers but nothing happened. Xorg,config shows I'm using the nv driver so perhaps I don't need anything more. 3D test runs @ >10fps, but it is an older nVidia GeForce4 440MX vidcard.
May I just say how much I appreciate your taking time to respond when (I now realize) you're a busy beaver debugging LH beta5 - can't hardly wait! _________________Welcome to my weird, wild, wonderful, wired world!

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